From Single Life to Benedict - Part 6 - New Job, New Bikes and a Garden

Alfred and Helen, along with children Bill, Abe, Jane, and  Tuney are now living in Linton. Alfred is working as bookkeeper for the Ford agency in town. It during the Depression and money is a little tight. His story continues:

"Then in 1931 I got what I thought was a break – an appointment to the Railway Mail Service in the month of July.  It was a hard decision to make – I went to Chicago and interviewed for the job.  Of course it was a substitute appointment and the highest wage a sub had made was a little over 1200⁰⁰ a year. I came back home and talked to several people about it and everybody advised me to take it but Paul Fry.  I didn’t take in consideration that he was Democratic Green County Chairman and in face of the depression everything pointed to a change in administration.  I feel that if I had stayed with Paul I would have realized something worthwhile for the change did come and Paul had a lucrative job under the new Governor Paul V. McNutt but I took the mail clerk job in August of 1931 and with our small bank balance we really had to skimp to make ends meet.  I liked the work, even though it was hard work and entailed a lot of study and I had to do a lot of dead heading – mostly out of Wheeling, W.Va. and Pittsburg, Pa.  I had to sub untill December of 1935.

  Several things happened during this time that made lasting memories for me.  One thing I remember was that all the boys in our neighborhood had bicycles.  Harold and Avery also wanted one but they didn’t nag us for one.  So one day Mom and I talked it over and decided that we could spare the money for we had a little on hand and I had a fairly good pay check due in another week so we called the boys in and told them we would buy them a bicycle that afternoon and the next week we would buy another one and they were to decide who would get the first one.  Harold being the oldest was to get the first one and out of the kitchen door they ran to tell the other boys, singing, “Happy Days are here again.”

 Another thing to mention was that Rev. Jaberg and I had the boys put out a garden on the Berns Farm on the banks of Buck Creek about a quarter of a mile from the road.  We all did a lot of hard work planting and tending and that creek bottom was a hot place.  Things didn’t do too good for it was a dry, arid summer.  Finally about mid summer we planted pole beans and they started off with a bang.  We cut poles and staked them and they soon covered the poles with foliage – looked like a good prospect.  I got home from a tour of duty on the road on a Saturday.  It rained that night but Mom and I decided to go out to the Bean Patch Sunday morning while the children went to Sunday School thinking we could be back in time for church services – two things to report, first we got stuck – hopelessly mired down and had to go to Uncle Karl’s and have him harness up a team of horses and pull us out; second, the Bean Beetles had eaten the beans up.  Then after dinner Rev. Jaberg and Garrett Kramer went out to see the beans.  He saw that a car had driven in the lane and he got stuck in the same mire hole and Uncle Karl had another car to pull out."

In 1931 the number of unemployed had reached 8 million with a 16.8% unemployment rate. Many car manufacturers were going out of business as a result of people not having enough money to buy them. 1931 was the year that the 102-story Empire State Building was completed, gambling became legal in Las Vegas, and drought and dust storms in the Midwest caused higher food prices. I'm sure that Alfred & Helen thought that a government job would ultimately lead to more stability. 

Mail service has moved from stagecoach and boat to the railway in the 1830's. In the 1860's they began sorting mail on the moving trains. They then developed a system for exchanging mail bags without the train stopping. Here is a video showing the procedure. The mid 1930's was the peak of the Railway Mail Service with over 10,000 trains having mail clerks aboard them. By 1975 a large percentage of the mail was carried by airlines but the creation of the interstate road system made transportation by truck the least expensive way to transport mail.

Railway Mail Car
from Smithsonian National Postal Museum website
http://postalmuseum.si.edu

“There is no position in the Government more exacting than that of a postal clerk, and no one that has so many requirements. He must not only be sound ‘in wind and limb,’ but possessed of more than ordinary intelligence, and a retentive memory. His work is constant, and his only recreation, study. He must not only be proficient in his own immediate work, but he must have a general knowledge of the entire country, so that the correspondence he handles shall reach its destination at the earliest possible moment. He must know no night and no day. He must be impervious to heat and cold. Rushing along at a rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, in charge of that which is sacred-the correspondence of the people...” —The American Railway   

Paul Fry Chairman of Beverage Commission

Alfred mentioned that Paul Fry had been the one person that though the Railway Mail Clerk position was not in Alfred best interest. In 1991, Rennis Wolfe wrote: " Mr. Fry made a substantial contribution to Paul McNut's campaign for governor and subsequently was appointed by the governor to organize and head the Indiana Alcoholic Division. He formulated the dictates and requisites of brewers, distributors and licensing of stores operating hours and literally all areas of the liquor business. He was appropriately dubbed the "Beer Baron of Indiana." 










The boys, Bill and Abe, aged 9 and 8 in 1931 got bikes.  They probably looked something like the one in this 1930 ad for a Sears bike. I wonder if they bought new ones or used? I'm sure it didn't matter to the boys as they said - "Happy Days are here again."





I wonder if those "Happy Days" have returned for the family. Till next time.....